Church records are an excellent source for accurate information on names, dates, and places of birth, marriage, and death. Most people in Scotland before the mid-nineteenth century are listed in church records. Since civil authorities did not begin registering vital statistics until 1855, church records are the best source of family information before that date.

Understanding Church Organization

United Presbyterian Church at Stonehouse, Scotland.jpg

The Church of Scotland (a Presbyterian church) has been the recognised national church of Scotland since 1690; it is not a state or "established" church (although that latter description has found its way into various official documentation such as marriage registers) and that independence from the state was eventually acknowledged in the Church of Scotland Act 1921. The organization of the Church of Scotland is as follows:

The General Assembly is the highest organizational body and serves as the final ecclesiastical court of appeals.

A Synod is made up of several presbyteries and serves as the court of appeals for those presbyteries.

A Presbytery is made up of several parishes and serves as the court of appeals for those parishes.

A parish is the lowest governing body.

A chapelry or chapel of ease is a small church which serves a distant part of a parish.

It may be necessary to know the parish where your ancestor was born, married, or died so you can search parish registers. If you do not know the parish but know the name of a village or town, you may use a gazetteer to locate the parish. For more information, read the article Scotland Gazetteers. Gazetteers may provide:

'The Scottish Congregational Ministry 1794-1993' by Rev. Dr William D. McNaughton, 1993 includes the names of ministers throughout Scottish church entries. The following works by the same author cover Scotland in various sections from c. 1790-1870, give history of churches and those involved.

Early Congregational Independency in Shetland' 2005

Early Congregational Independency in Orkney' 2006

Early Congregational Independency in the Highlands and Islands and the North-East of Scotland' 2003

Early Congregational Independency in Lowland Scotland Volume I' 2005

Early Congregational Independency in Lowland Scotland Volume II' 2007

Nonconformists

Churches which are not part of the Church of Scotland are often referred to as nonconformist although this word's correct use does not have valid application in a country with no state church and properly applies only in England where the Church of Scotland is a non-conformist church. There were two categories of so-called nonconformist churches in Scotland:

Seceders -- Those who seceded from the main church but were still Presbyterian in form.

Dissenters -- Those who were not Presbyterian in form, such as Baptist, Methodist, or Catholic.

Nonconformists had their own congregations and kept their own records. They could go to church wherever they wished and were not confined to parish boundaries. However, before 1834, nonconformist ministers were not authorized to perform marriages as clergyman; after 1834 they could perform marriages if the banns had first been read in the parish church. Total authority was granted in 1855.In the context of Scots Law as it applied until 1939 this only in practice affected the mode of marriage as until then any declaration of marriage in front of witnesses was valid although many might have failed to be recorded.

For more background information on churches in Scotland, including a historical time-line, read the article Scotland Church History.

Identifying Churches

Books containing maps that show parish boundaries:

Civil Parishes and Counties of North East Scotland Showing Overall Dates of Old Parochial Records: Held in Edinburgh and Available Worldwide on Microfilm [Scotland]: Aberdeen and North East Scotland Family History Society[ 198-]. (Family History Library Map Case 941 E7c pt. 4)

1851 Census of Places of Worship

Popularly called the 1851 Religious Census, this is a resource for identifying what churches existed where in 1851. Read more...

The Union List of Church Records

The staff of the Family History Library has compiled a resource called the Scotland Church Records Union List which strives to identify all pre-1855 churches in Scotland and whether they have surviving records. It also contains brief parish and congregation histories. This information, arranged by county then parish, is available through the Wiki by searching for a county or parish of interest.

Old Parochial Registers (OPR)

The term old parochial registers refers to the parish records kept by the Presbyterian Church (Church of Scotland) from the time the church began keeping records up to the year 1855. Records include registers of:

Most parish registers begin after 1650. Some kirk session (parish court) records begin earlier than the parish registers. Kirk session records may have some christening, marriage, and burial records in them.

Some early parish registers may be in Latin. Scotland has its own version of English, so you may need to use a dictionary to understand some words and terms. Read more in Scotland Language and Languages.

For an interesting article on what is found in the registers, see:

Whyte, Donald. "Old Parochial Registers of Scotland." Refers to people from various parts of Ireland - baptisms, marriages - that were held in various Scotland Old Parish Registers for the years 1691-1846. Article in The Irish Ancestor, vol.III, no.2,1971, pages 79-82. Family History Library book 941.5 B2i.

Indexes

Indexes to the old parochial registers have been created and are available in various forms. See the following Wiki articles for more information: